Distant Lands

Sunday, 07 September 2008

How to get crayon off of a rental car

The artist, at rest.

So while we were driving the Ring of Beara in Ireland, we exceeded the standard 3-hour window of in-the-car time by a lot. We knew we what we were doing. We'd broken the drive up with a walk in the woods, a visit to a tearoom, and an after-lunch romp in the local playground at Castletownbury.

We figured we were good to go.

Yeah. Ok, so then, while waiting for one of us to come out of a restroom that happened to be attached to a craft gallery (oh the pretty, oh the expensive), the other one of us decided to delve into the Bag of Fun and pulled out a coloring book and a crayon. The other options having been exhausted already, this was really the best decision save for Fedexing himself back to the States.

And then, when we were rolling again, we forgot to remove the purple crayon from the reach-radius of the carseat. Cue the fateful music.

Our kid has long arms. Thankfully, she's also got a little restraint, and only managed to decorate the back of the passenger seat in our rental (Hi there, rental people!… guess I didn't tell you this part when I turned the car in.). But it was pretty awe-inspiring. Long strokes and short dashes… a couple places where purple wax went into 3-d overdrive. Pretty much the whole thing had some evidence of her general opinion of us and our mad planning skills.

We took it as time to learn a lesson, and she and I started out the next morning with a plastic cup full of dishwashing detergent and some paper towels. I held things. She waved the towel over the air near the seat. "This isn't FUN! I want to go somewhere!" she let me know, not three minutes into our (mutual) punishment.

Yeah, kid. Me too.

We got a few marks off and decided that we'd work on it again after the morning's activities. Later that afternoon, we did some more work on the project, and then, figuring that enough was enough, I bought a dish-scrubbing sponge (a gentle one, because - rental car).

The next morning, we headed out again and got the rest of the marks off. "Now I know better," she told me, very seriously. I'm electing to take that in reference to the crayon incident, and not the power of sponge over paper towel.

Then we headed out from Cork for Waterford … to tour Waterford Crystal. I'm working on the 'Toddler in a China Shop' post now.

Travel Along!

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